To:G. Y. ZINOVIEV

Published:First published in part inPravda, No. 17, January 21, 1925.

      Published in full in 1931 inLenin Miscellany XVIII.

      Printed from the original.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Progress Publishers,[1976],

      Moscow,Volume 35,

      page336.Translated:Andrew RothsteinTranscription\Markup:R. CymbalaPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive.You may freely copy, distribute,
	display and perform this work, as well as make derivative and
	commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
	Archive” as your source.•README

June26,1918

Alsoto Lashevich and other members of the C.C.

ComradeZinoviev,

Onlytoday we have heard at the C.C. that in Petrograd
theworkerswanted to reply to the murder of Volodarsky by
mass terror and that you (not you personally, but the
Petrograd Central Committee members, or Petrograd
Committee members) restrained
them.[1]

Iprotest most emphatically!

Weare discrediting ourselves: we threaten mass terror,
even in resolutions of the Soviet of Deputies, yet when it
comes to action weobstructthe revolutionary initiative of
the masses, aquitecorrect one.

Thisisim-poss-ible!

Theterrorists will consider us old women. This is
wartime above all. We must encourage the energy and mass
character of the terror against the counter-revolutionaries,
and particularly in Petrograd, the example of which isdecisive.

P.S.Detachments and still more detachments: make use
of your victory at the elections. If the Petrograders move
10–20 thousand intoTambovGubernia, the Urals, etc., they
will save both themselves and the whole revolution,completely and for certain. The harvest is a giant one, we have to
hang on only a few weeks more.

[1]Volodarsky,V.—a leader of the Petrograd Bolsheviks, editor of
the Petrograd newspaperKrasnaya Gazeta(Red Gazette) and
member of the Presidium of the Petrograd Soviet. He was murdered on
June 20, 1918 by Socialist-Revolutionaries, who in direct collusion
with whiteguards and foreign interventionists adopted terroristic
tactics against the Bolsheviks.

OnAugust 30, M.S. Uritsky, Chairman of the Petrograd
Extraordinary Commission, was murdered by a Socialist-Revolutionary.
The same day a villainous attempt to assassinate Lenin was made
by the Socialist-Revolutionary terrorist Kaplan. Lenin was
gravely wounded by two poisoned bullets.